SchansBlog

Thanks for coming! I plan to post a lot of interesting articles and comment on a wide range of things-- from political to religious, from private to public, from formal writing on public policy to snippets on random observations.

Thursday, March 31, 2016

a troika of trios on Trump: 3 historical precedents; 3 on his supporters; and 3 on his style, incl. famous people who talk/act like him

Three Historical Precedents:

In City Journal, David Marcus compares Trump to Perot-- a comparison I've drawn many times. Marcus sees Trump as the next wave of the Reform Party, with another billionaire businessman who would "get things done". Both Trump and Perot had a few firm ideas, a lot of gibberish, and projected a sense of competence and leadership. In Reason, Jesse Walker compares Trump to "Pappy" O'Daniel-- a comparison I've never heard. It's an interesting read on a now-historically-obscure "character" in the popular and political realms form the middle of the 20th century. In The Hedgehog Review, Johann Deem goes back further in time to compare this movement to the Know-Nothing party/movement of the mid-19th century. The "attraction" to Trump seems to "have little to do with a detailed program or
platform, and far more with Trump’s successfully projected image as a
fearless man of action...Trump’s promise to do something makes him stand apart from a political establishment, right and left, that seems clueless and adrift."

Deem's conclusion: "To the extent that Trump’s supporters represent a new Know-Nothing
movement, the lesson is clear. Globalization has resulted in significant
cultural and economic changes that many Americans feel have been
hurtful not only to themselves but also to the nation as a whole. Those
same voters feel betrayed by a political elite that seems, in their
view, more committed to cosmopolitanism and the international order than
to national self-interest. The loss of jobs and even of whole industries, drug use, violent
crime, the spread of terrorism, and the challenges of an increasingly
diverse society—all of these can be connected with some of the
disruptive and dislocating effects of globalization. Trump’s brand of
nativism shifts all of the blame for these and other problems to people
and nations beyond our borders. But it would be wrong to see his
supporters’ attraction to such nativism as simple xenophobia, though of
course it can easily become that. Above all, Trump’s supporters want
someone who will do something, almost anything, about problems they
think are growing worse."
Who's Voting for Trump? In this syndicated piece, Ramesh Ponnurutries to move casual observers off of simplistic and self-serving explanations for the Trump phenomena. Two data points: Trump has less support from the most conservative than one would think and more support from the college-educated than one would think (apparently doing better than Perot on that metric).

His conclusion: "There are several streams that feed Trump’s river. Some of his voters
are working-class whites who feel Republicans aren’t looking out for
them; some of them want to deport all illegal immigrants; some of them
want to overthrow a hated Republican establishment; some of them admire
Trump as a successful businessman and think he would run the government
well too. And, of course, some small number of them, all too amply represented on Twitter, are David Duke and his friends. An
oversimplified view of Trump’s coalition can lead us to mistaken
conclusions. If we think that all of his supporters are bigots, for
example, we will have an unfair and alarming view of a large share of
our fellow citizens. If we think that they are all dead-set against
Republican politicians, we will assume that anti-Trump statements by
those politicians are futile efforts, or assume that all of them will be
furious if a divided convention nominates someone other than Trump."

In the WSJ, Aaron Zitner reports on exit poll data from the 20 states that have voted through March 21-- and how Trump has done vs. the other candidates. He's doing better with 10 of the categories listed: "some college" or less, < $50K income, males, rural, 45 and older, "somewhat conservative", immigration as most important issue, and illegal immigrants should be deported. And he's doing worse in the other 19 (generally smaller) categories. Perot-like, although Perot had more appeal further along the income/education spectrum.

In this First Things essay, R.R. Reno notes the rebelliousness of voters, exhibited most notably in both support for Sanders and Trump. In particular, Reno focuses on the willingness of various factions in the GOP to stand apart from the GOP establishment given their disappointments with the promises and actions. (One can only hope that more in both parties will not have such low standards!) On Trump's Style and how it apes a lot of popular people who remain largely unscathed...Again in First Things, R.R. Reno compares Trump to Pope Francis, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Rush Limbaugh, Nicholas Kristof and Bill Clinton-- a nice, diverse set of folks! I hadn't seen this (or looked for it-- I don't pay much attention to pop political culture), but it sounds correct to me. Reno also notes that this is, in a sense, the culmination of the 1960s anti-establishment movement.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Good News! (NT Wright's book)

Simply Good News was my introduction to N.T. Wright's books. (I had read
essays previously.) Wright is in the mold of CS Lewis-- thorough, relatively
easy-to-read, and vitally interested in "Mere Christianity". I can
certainly recommend this book strongly-- for its style and substance. Wright lays out an
important reminder, from many angles, that the "Good News" is really
Good News.

Wright opens by defining "good news" (3-4):

1.) "a new and unexpected development within a much
longer story";

2.) "everything will be different now"; and

3.) it "introduces an intermediate period of
waiting".

In this, "good news" is similar to
"apocalyptic" as a literary genre-- with its difficult context,
intervention by God, change in the current, and hope for the future. Revelation
is the prototypical example, although it's not read often enough as
apocalyptic. But there are other examples in Scripture as well, within the
prophets (e.g., chunks of Isaiah) and even the gospels (e.g., Matthew 24). Both
Gospel and Apocalyptic create a new perspective and call for "new
decisions". (12)

Wright argues that it's important to see the Christian faith
as both "good" and as "news" (2). Instead, Christians have
often reduced the good news to a "system" of religion, salvation or
morality (65). Little of that would be "news" and not much of it
would be considered "good". It’s 2,000 years old and if it's not the
on-going revelation of a dynamic God, living through believers and expanding
his Kingdom, then it's simply "old news", not especially
"good" and certainly not "news". (6)

Jesus was not offering incomparable teaching, though it is
remarkable. Another problem is that, while true, it is only part of the
picture. He was not offering a moral example, although if you're looking for
that, it was impeccable. "He was claiming to do things through which the
world would be healed, transformed, rescued and renewed. He was, in short,
announcing good news..." (36)

In fact, it’s the greatest news in all history. Wright (59):
"Jesus' resurrection falls into a different category...it if did happen,
it set a new standard for our understanding of the way the world is. Lots of
events do that in smaller ways. Splitting the atom. Space travel. The discovery
of America. Everything looks different once those have happened."

Reductionism

One of Wright's biggest themes is that the Gospel is often
reduced to only one or two of its (chief) elements. The reductions distort the
Gospel, largely through omission.

For example, Christianity is often reduced to Christ's death
as payment for sins. But "there is a.) more to Jesus' death than this; and
b.) more to the gospel than Jesus' death." (66) So, the Gospel is
sold as a ticket to Heaven or a ticket out of Hell, reducing it to a formulaic
set of beliefs. (Dallas Willard memorably describes this as a "bar-code
faith": if you have the correct beliefs, you get the code slapped on your
butt and you'll get scanned into heaven.) "The usual heaven-and-hell
scheme, however popular, distorts the Bible's good news." (5)

Related, people often see Christianity as having little or
nothing to say about the "world downstairs", aside from observation
of a moral code. And if someone does talk about making a difference on earth,
they are often rejected as worldly and unspiritual (76-77). Both secular and
religious fundamentalists ironically hold the same view and both "are committed
to not noticing it": "The secularist lives downstairs and has locked
the door at the bottom of the stairs. The [Christian] fundamentalist lives
upstairs, those he constantly shouts down the stairs to tell people they should
be coming up to join him." (79)

When it has downstairs relevance, the Gospel is often
portrayed as “truth”-- and sold on its reliability and usefulness. As such, the
Gospel is reduced to "good advice": here's how to live, to pray, to
become a better person, to get to heaven, etc. (4) Advice to be considered,
"an option for your future" (19). But "despite Paul's talk about
God, he was not telling people about a new religious system...many people today
assume [the same thing]-- that Christianity is a religion, a moral system, a
philosophy. In other words...advice." (16)

His larger point is spot-on: don't reduce the good news to
good advice (47). Still, Wright knows that he must answer the question:
"but is it true?" and devotes all of chapter 4 to the task. For one
thing, news is not something to be debated-- like advice or moral systems:
"Either the event happened or it didn't; if it did happen, either it means
what people say it means or it doesn't." (17) He notes that people often
have a high bar for believing something historical-- well, at least for some
sorts of historical events. (He doesn't go into it, but I'm always amazed of
the historical faith of skeptics for other historical events, and even the
narrative of macro-evolution with relatively little evidence.) History
"works from evidence and looks for high probability about what caused that
evidence. Like science, however, history works by hypothesis and
verification." (58)

A New Kind
of King and Kingdom

On the "paradox" of Jesus' mixed reception, Wright
notes that "people found [Jesus] both compelling and puzzling". He
was not simply adding to knowledge, or providing a "new formula for how to
go to heaven", or giving "new or more detailed answers to questions
they were already asking". Instead, "he was doing and saying things designed
to tease his hearers into facing new and dangerous questions...Most people,
then and now, find disturbing and try to avoid it." (61b-62)

Moreover, it's not just that God is (becoming) King. His
Kingdom is altogether different: "a different kind of power...neither of
brute force nor of superior argument but of something that goes much
deeper...the power of agape." (42) Moreover, "power comes through
service, particularly through self-sacrifice". (63) Wright then notes that
"The reason Jesus went on talking about kingdom, despite the obvious risks
of misunderstanding in his own day, was because he wanted to replace the
ordinary sort of kingdom with a quite different sort." (63)

Wright notes that part of the good news is difficult for us
to understand because we take it for granted now: Paul "was offering good
news about a different God. A living God. A God who had made himself known in
and through Jesus of Nazareth." But today, "people often use the word
god as if it always meant the same thing".

Again, the Gospel is often gets reduced to "getting
people to heaven and teaching them to behave along the way." (22b-23) But Jesus
didn't "say much about heaven in the sense we normally mean it." (6)
His focus was on bringing heaven to earth (Mt 6:10). "Instead of
suggesting that we could escape the earth to go to heaven, Jesus' good news was
about heaven coming to earth." (7)

Biblical and
Theological Context for the Gospel

Wright points to "two telltale signs that something has
gone wrong" in our explanation of the good news (69): they're not placed
within the narratives of creation and covenant; and they fail to set the news
in the context of a God of Love. "By itself, an empty tomb in the
ancient world would mean grave robbery." (50) Instead, the resurrection is
at the heart of the Christian faith, combining three foundational biblical
themes about God: creation, rescue, and redemption (49).

Chapter 7 is devoted to questions of theodicy and the claims
of atheism and esp. deism. The former tries to get rid of God: "the idea
of the big bully in the sky. If there is no god, you can relax and enjoy your
life. Perhaps." (129) The latter assumes that God creates, but does not
sustain it; He's off somewhere, uninterested in His creation and His creatures.
Both are responses to the problem of theodicy: why doesn't God intervene (more
often) in the blandness and the injustices of life? His answer (131): "not
parachuting down...to dispense solutions to all problems, not zapping everything
into shape...but living in the mess and muddle...at an especially difficult
moment in its history and absorbing the pain and shame of it all."
(131-132) Wright appeals to both Genesis 1 and especially Genesis 2 to fill out
the picture. "The most important point was not to understand him but to
trust him." (133) From there, Wright continues by describing the Biblical
pictures of God as Creator, Judge, and Lover.

Wright is quite helpful on eschatology as well-- both in
helping one draw inferences and to help avoid excesses and errors whatever
one's eschatological views. "Elaborate theories about the second coming
have been developed in which the whole point is that Jesus will come back, not
to stay on this earth to transform and renew it, but to take his people away.
But this misses the whole point...the good news about the future cannot be
about leaving earth and going to heaven. It must have something to do with
heaven and earth coming together...creation itself being renewed and
restored." (90) As such, the Gospel is greatest version of “the now and
the not-yet”.

Wright also clarifies Philippians 3:20's reference to
"citizens of heaven". We think of citizenship and heaven as that's
where we really belong. But this "isn't how citizenship worked in [Paul's]
world." The hope was that the colonists (including retired soldiers)
"would bring the benefits of Roman civilization to Philippi."
Philippians 3:20 continues with Jesus coming here. And so, "It isn't that
we are going off to the capital city to join the king; he is going to come from
there to transform our lives here." (94-95)

What do we
do with this?

One problem: the true/full Gospel will often be seen as
foolishness or scandalous. Wright devotes all of chapter 2 to this pairing.
"The news is either offensive or boring. either scandalous or merely
nonsense." (22) (As an aside, he uses an excellent analogy about England's
World Cup victory over Australia. It was Good News to him, but foolish to Americans
[who cares?!] and scandalous to the Aussies! [9])

Wright argues that we need to keep five
"propositions" in balance (118-119): 1.) the lordship of the risen
Christ (which implies that "real and lasting change is possible at
personal, social, cultural, national, and global levels"); 2.) real and
lasting change is costly; 3.) such change is sporadic (rather than always
forward); 4.) the opposite: that we will be tempted to "retreat once more
into gloom and negativity"; and 5.) the importance of working tirelessly
for real and lasting change.

That said, in the face of rationalist skepticism, Wright warns
against an over-reliance on rationalist apologetics and its
opposite--romanticism, with its appeal to experience and feelings. (80-81)

Postscript

Finally, as an aside of sorts (since I'm not tying it into
the review), Wright is very helpful in understanding the structure of the
Lord's Prayer in chapter 8. In a word, he reads it backwards-- in order to read
it, better, forwards. In this, I was reminded of Dallas Willard's
immensely-profitable take on the Sermon on the Mount in Divine Conspiracy and Eugene Peterson's many
useful insights on the Gospel of Luke in Tell It Slant. Those nuggets alone make each
book worth the read.

UPDATE: Greg Laurie runs with a similar theme-- in noting that if you're not sharing it, then you don't really see it as "good news".

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Happy Easter!

For those who know about Jesus, everybody believes some miracle about His death and resurrection: my beliefs (and its variants) include the supernatural; the other options are all-natural; all are miraculous.

For example, some believe that the Romans and Jews lost a politically-important dead body; that the Roman guards were inept; that a swooning Jesus recovered; that the cowardly disciples quickly regained their mettle; that the disciples were later willing to die nasty deaths for a big lie; and so on. Miracle upon miracle!

What amazing faith it takes to believe the purely natural here! But in this case, I'm certainly glad to be among the "ye of little faith".

Happy Easter to you and yours as we celebrate this aspect of the Good News!_________________

Hopefully, when we recognize our sins (which can be quite difficult), there are four stages: remorse and regret-- and then ideally, repentance and redemption.

Instead, we often try to rationalize it away; blame-shift to others; (favorably) compare ourselves to others; and distract ourselves with shiny objects.

Also, they provided a useful comparison between Peter and Judas. I don't know why I hadn't thought this before, but what if Judas had been able to wait 24 hours instead of committing suicide? He would have learned that the life-saving truth that no sin is too big to be defeated by the Cross and the Resurrection.

I also appreciated the reminder that the only two uses of "charcoal fire" in the NT: when Peter denies Jesus (Jn 18:18) and when Jesus cooks them breakfast at the redemption of Peter (Jn 21:9).

And one more detail on the John 21 passage: In the English, it's not obvious. But in the Greek, Jesus and Peter are using two different Greek words for love. Jesus asks whether Peter will "agape" (unconditional love) and Peter uses "phileo" (more of a brotherly love) instead. Maybe it's nothing, but it seems like Jesus is using agape to make a deeper point with Peter.

_________________h/t: Jeff Hunter (through Abey Kuruvilla)

In 1 Cor 15:1-11, Paul spends more space than one might expect on Christ's resurrection. There are 4 things which are of primary importance we take from this scripture. 1. Christ died for our sins 2. He was then buried 3. After 3 days (no swooning! He was dead), He was raised to live again (as we all shall) 4. Then appeared to many, many people over a long period (40 days)

It's a bit puzzling that Paul would say these 4 things are of *primary* importance. It might appear that only 2 of these things are primary (#1 and #3). But they are critical because (#2) Buried proves "dead", (substantiating evidence as it were) and (#4) Appearance proves "raised" (to many people over a long time; their ability to validate the evidence). So these are ALL of first importance. Moreover, Paul labors this point for a long time, indicating that this is a vital point in his arguments.

The fact that Jesus appears is important because He wants all of us to see, to know Him.

Friday, March 25, 2016

how can you know if you're saved?

The base-level answer is quite easy. Verses like Ephesians 2:8-9 make it clear that we're saved by faith in God's grace, rather than trying to justify ourselves to God through our deeply-flawed works. But Ephesians 2:10 follows by noting that we're created to do good works. We're not saved by "good works". But we're saved-- and then we're supposed to do good works from the overflow of a saving faith and the empowerment of Christ in us. Or in a word, we're not saved by good works, but to do good works.

Biblically, there is (or can be)
some challenge here. The biggest rub is not (and cannot be) the existence
of sin or even "besetting sins" (however defined), since everyone
sins, believer or not.

Particularly from John's epistles
and James, the question is what to infer from a lack of fruit or the production
of largely-rancid fruit. The problems are that:

a.) it's difficult for one to judge
someone else on this (in fact, there are warnings against that and prohibitions
against a firmly-held sense of judgment about someone else); and

b.) it can even be difficult to
judge that within oneself-- thus, leading to potential and highly-appropriate
questions about whether one has a saving faith.

If I had to recommend one passage on
this, it'd be James 2 on "can such faith save?". There, Abraham and
Rahab are examples of those who are justified before people by their deeds,
even though they are justified before God by their faith. John and James indicate/write
that if I don't have appropriate fruit in my life, then I (and those close to
me) should be asking some tough questions.

If one is saved by grace, embraced
through faith-- and has the relevant "fruit"-- then biblically, one
can be assured of salvation, eternal life, Heaven, etc. It requires as much
faith as believing that Abraham Lincoln was president.

Friday, March 11, 2016

on the brilliance of the New Deal

The
New Deal was awesome. It only took six years of its brilliance to get
the unemployment rate down to 19%. (My favorite part is when FDR would
wake up in the AM and just decide to move the price of gold around.) Good news for people who feel the need to be partisans: the New Deal makes Obama and his Congresses look like economic wizards.It is certainly correct that the Great Depression is not a full test of Keynesian econ, given all of the other govt interventions (by Hoover-- far from a free-market type; and more famously, FDR) and non-Keynesian policy failures of that time (policies that would have concerned Keynes with respect to Macro): wage and price floors, dramatically strengthening labor market cartels, catatonic monetary policy, etc.

People often forget the tax increases of the Great Depression-- in particular, the new payroll tax on labor in 1937-38. It's funny: when you tax labor, firms don't want to use labor as much. Weird, huh?

Keynesianism has been intellectually bankrupt (in Econ) since the early 1970s. (Believing in old Keynesianism is akin to believing atavistic theories of criminal justice. "New Keynesianism" is far more respectable.)

On the claim that WWII fixed everything: 1.) It's always fun with people advocate war to fix an economy. 2.) There's certainly a sense in which the claim is true: when you have surplus labor, you can reduce the surplus by conscripting a ton of people and sending them to fight.

3.) One of the tough nuggets for K was the failed predictions of economic calamity when the WWII spending went away. It is a sad mark for the profession that Keynesianism didn't take a fatal beating until years later.

Monday, March 7, 2016

Emerson in the WSJ on faith and reason in science and religion

He starts with the 2/11 announcement of the detection of gravitational waves in deep space, after decades of work, confirming Einstein's theory about the ripple effect of space-time. Emerson: Such persistence nicely invokes the spirit of the biblical epistle to the Hebrews: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Italian physicist Rovelli wrote about this and also added the term "faith" to the discussion: the scientists were pursuing a “dream based on faith in reason: that the logical deductions of Einstein and his mathematics would be reliable.”

He cites ASU physicist Paul Davies on the dependence of the work of science on beliefs: “Just because the sun has risen every day of your life, there is no guarantee that it will therefore rise tomorrow. The belief that it will—that there are indeed dependable regularities of nature—is an act of faith, but one which is indispensable to the progress of science.”

Emerson: "The fundamental choice is not whether humans will have faith, but rather what the objects of their faith will be, and how far and into what dimensions this faith will extend....But just as faith is indispensable to science, so is reason essential to religion. Many find themselves relating to God in a way analogous to the scientists searching for gravitational waves. These seekers of religious truth are persuaded by preliminary evidence and compelled by the testimony of those who have previously studied the matter...In such a context, it isn’t blind belief that fuels the search, any more than scientists blindly pursued the implications of Einstein’s theory. Rather, it’s a belief informed by credible reasons, nurtured by patient trust, open to revision..."

About Me

First and foremost, I am saved by God's grace as manifested most clearly through the atoning death of Jesus Christ-- and thus, adopted into His family. As a result, I increasingly seek to extend His grace to others in my daily life. On the home front, I am a husband and father to four young men (two by adoption and two the more conventional way). Professionally, I am an economist who loves to teach and is active in public policy circles. Vocationally, I am an active writer and the author of three books (one on the book of Joshua; two on public policy-- one secular, one Christian). Finally, I am the co-author of a 21-month discipleship curriculum, Thoroughly Equipped (and a lighter 36-week version), for developing competent lay-leaders in the Church. Related to that work, Kurt and I have two books, Enough Horses in the Barn and Roll Up Your Sleeves.